Rustling of an Animal
by emerald1198
Summary: Adam's witnessed Mike Dallas drunk more times than he can count, but tonight is different. One-shot. Post Sabotage Part 2.


Thanks to everyone taking the time to read.

Note: Assuming Adam was at Clare's party (since we didn't see him in the episode) and knows about the harassment. Takes place a few hours after the fight.

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Tonight, Mike Dallas is drunk, but not _wasted. _Numb, but not delusional. And it's something that Adam's never seen before in all of the time Degrassi's hockey captain, party animal, hook-up extraordinaire has lived with him.

It is a dark, heavy night, and that helpless feeling of desperation, the kind you get when there is everything to be done and nothing that's in your hands, weighs down on the boy's shoulders with more force than the glare of the midnight stars that burned into his neck all along the walk home. His body is limp, dead weight that he's managed to drag behind him (because what else is there to do?), and it moves on its own accord like what could be described as a robot if only someone would give him some orders. Program him with some answers. Instead, he moves on aimlessly, slipping inside the back door in the basement of his home where nothing is as it once was.

And all over again, Adam is forced to remind himself that his big brother is on the fast track to ridding himself of family, a _stage, _their mother calls it, yet one that Adam isn't sure he's ready to accept (not that there is anyone to confess this to, no one to actually _listen _or even care). And fast asleep upstairs, there is a girl who in one way or another will always make his heart sputter idiotically like the fool he's always been, the boy who dares to love the girl his brother does. And then there is the party animal, crouched away now with his booze and his mind trained not to think. Not before he screws up _or_ after.

At first, Adam assumes that the can in Dallas' hand is the first of many. The boy, broad-shouldered and dark-eyed, lays slumped over the couch beside the stairwell, his fingers wrapped around his drink in a peculiar way so that it appears he's studying it before each careful sip. For every slow gulp, he closes his eyes and leans his head back to face the ceiling.

Something is very different tonight. For Mike Dallas is not a drunk with a reason. Never has he been that.

"Hey." Dallas croaks out the word, low and brooding like the rustling of an animal in the grass that could strike but chooses not to.

"You sure have a lot of nerve." Adam waits for the rage he should feel, rage for the boy who would pound him into the dirt outside if not for the impending beat-down from the big brother (who may very well not care anymore, but Adam certainly is not going to bring that to Dallas' question), rage for the man who tore the innocence away from a girl who Adam's never known to be made of anything but compassion, and rage that circles back to the first boy for pulling the ground out right from under the girl. But it's all running a bit late, and he's numb with a headache that surges deep into his skull, and because of that, the words that are meant to be a warning come out lifeless, nearly indifferent.

Dallas only chuckles at them, and there's a part of Adam that would like to think that, had the words been uttered with the proper amount of intimidation, this wouldn't have been the older boy's response. The other part, however, just shrugs flaccidly and accepts that he is a boy built like a girl with a voice too high, and would never in a million years resemble any form of a threat to Mike Dallas.

"Beer?" The boy grunts with a jerk of his head toward the remaining three cans that rest on the coffee table.

Adam hopes the look to hold his face in that moment is one of disgust. "No," he mutters with a hard voice, "I'm going to bed." He says this knowing full well that he is far too tired to sleep, but he'll try. Just like every man does when he feels this emptiness. And it will not be the thoughts keeping him awake, either. No, they will turn up in the morning or perhaps tomorrow evening. Tonight, it will just be the hollowness in his body, the inability to properly function, that will allow the ceiling patterns to hold his gaze all through the dark hours.

He expects no answer from the predator, too tired and too drunk to continue to fume as Adam's sure he did hours ago when Fiona, Dallas' only real friend at school outside of that hockey team, had recoiled away from him with a snap, just like anyone did sooner or later. With his torn-apart knuckles and nose dripping blood, Dallas had staggered away from the girl threatening to call the police, had stood dumbly in front of her for a moment with his hands wide in innocence until she had repeated herself with a firmness that didn't stumble.

"Leave." And Fiona's eyes had hardened with finality.

"Adam."

He's only taken one step when Dallas calls his name, and against his better judgment, Adam cranes his neck to peek around the wall.

"Is Clare . . . I mean, how is she?" The only light in the whole basement is the dim glow of the television screen in the corner, and perhaps the pictures dancing off the wall are throwing off his vision, but for just a glimmer of a moment, Adam thinks he sees a hint of remorse. It's somewhere in the way Dallas' shoulders fall, the way his eyes cast down for a moment and he swallows hard.

"She's really upset," he mutters, and again, the rage is missing, "but it's not like you care." And then he starts up the staircase again.

"I do!" The deep voice objects behind him, and this time it is not the voice of a menace, not at all a creature with the ability to strike. Instead, Dallas is desperate and exposed, and when Adam, as he contemplates merely continuing upstairs without a word, takes a few hesitant steps upward, Dallas shoots up from the couch cushion, stumbling a bit. "I _do_ care about her!"

"It's a little late for that."

"I know."

Adam doesn't want to, knows that in the morning, it will take everything he has not to drive Dallas' face into the ground, but right now, with the shadows dancing off the walls and his body feeling numb, Adam finds himself turning to descend the staircase.

And he does the one thing he knows to do. "I think I'll take you up on that beer." Just like every man does when he feels this emptiness.

Dallas smirks a little, just enough to remind them both that not everything is in _utter _turmoil, and he tosses the younger Torres brother a can and pats the seat beside him. It's in that moment, too, that Adam has the strange, possibly irrelevant, thought that perhaps people aren't all that different in the end. And just like the boy before him, he takes slow, careful sips and hangs his head back after each one, watching the shadows.

It is after his third can – and Dallas' fifth – that the words are spoken, the rage far away by now. "You know, one of these days, you're going to screw up really bad."

"I know."

And with those words, Dallas snaps open another can.

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Reviews are always appreciated.


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